History of Search Engines

Almost everyone that uses the internet automatically takes their favourite search engine that they use for granted. A lot of people favour Google, or Firefox but there are several others that people like. So when did they first become available?

Search engines actually go back many years, however they were not nearly as effective or as sophisticated as they are today. With the technology that we now have no doubt a few years from now the search engines that we use today will seem just as obsolete as the ones of the past do now.

To really get a feel for search engines one needs to go back to 1993. All of the indexing that was done at that time was done manually by individuals. Some of what could be called crude search programs would be the “Who Is” search provider which goes back to 1982. Then with some advancement in this field moving up to 1989 there was the Knowbot Information Service.

When search programs started to become a little more advanced it was when the first searching content tool became available. It was called Archie and was brought to life by three students from the McGill University in Montreal. Following this was Veronica and Jughead became available through Gopher.

What has to be remembered that these were considered to be search programs. What is really recognized as the first search engine although really very basic was W3Catalog. Throughout the years following this there were different forms of what could be called search engines but more so search programs. Their format for search was pretty basic and not all that interesting to look at except you could find some of the information that you were looking for.

The one most noted today of course would be Google. This conglomerate all began in January 1996 and as we all know is still going strong today.